After Midnight
by Francesca Wayland
Summary: "God knows where she is now." For one night, Sherlock knows as well.
1. Chapter 1

**This takes place in our present (so after S3E1 and before S3E2). It was originally inspired by the song ****_Sometime Around Midnight_****, by The Airborne Toxic Event, which I highly recommend.**

**This is dedicated to my lovely friend Mel. **

_"God knows where she is now."_

* * *

><p><strong>After Midnight<strong>

Sometime around half eleven, Sherlock Holmes sat ramrod straight at a pocked and ring-stained wooden table, feeling in turns both magnanimous and irritated beyond measure, with a growing bias towards the latter.

A tumbler of scotch sat untouched by his right elbow; it had been placed there either by John or Lestrade, and though the alcohol didn't tempt him, he was fighting the impulse to beg a cigarette off of someone. Fortunately for his self-control smoking in pubs had been banned for years, and he couldn't find the motivation to push his way through the crowd to reach the designated area, despite his vanishing tolerance. The afterglow of the solved case had long since evaporated and he was growing restless again, although it wasn't the usual cerebral itch he got when his brain began to stall and crave another endorphin rush. It was a vague unease he couldn't place, and his inability to categorise it rankled him further.

This wasn't how he had envisioned the evening, though he supposed he had only himself to blame for that bit of naiveté. But he had been particularly pleased with the resolution of the most recent case, which had involved the murdered trainer of the queen's racehorse Estimate, a surgical scalpel hidden in the eaves of a Zone 2 tube stop, a disgraced ex-Ladbroke's bookmaker, and a rather territorial border collie, and when Lestrade had suggested they have a celebratory drink, it had almost sounded appealing in his rush of euphoria. He had envisioned himself holding court and explaining each induction in detail, while both John and Lestrade nodded in appreciation and John took notes for his blog.

John had known better, though—of course he had—and so when Sherlock had first agreed to go he had looked shocked, but intrigued.

"All right then," John had said, raising his voice as if in good-natured challenge. "If you can make it through a round for each of us—that's three—then I'll come over to yours and wash up your chemistry glassware for an entire month whenever it's needing done. It's the only washing-up you ever manage, but I know you hate it."

Sherlock had waved away John's apparent doubts with jovial dismissal, high on his triumph, but Sherlock had overestimated how far his elevated mood would take him, and John had appraised the situation with far better accuracy. Only in retrospect did Sherlock appreciate how well John had pre-emptively manipulated him.

At first things had proceeded just as he had imagined they would. They had arrived during the tail-end of the post-work drinks clientele and the late-night crowd had yet to make an appearance, and most of the tables and booths had been empty. Sherlock and his colleagues had in fact discussed the case, and he had felt strangely content and companionable in those moments. It was a glimpse at the sort of camaraderie that he rarely experienced—few were willing to socialise on his terms, and he was inclined to socialise with even fewer—and he was gratified to think that perhaps they had both fully accepted his place in their lives again.

In the 90 minutes that followed, however, the atmosphere had taken a decided turn, as had his mood. As Lestrade and John grew more inebriated, they lost interest in the details of how Sherlock had pulled all the pieces of the disparate puzzles together to create one cohesive but complex narrative, and Lestrade had even loudly interrupted him to complain that he was tired of 'shop talk.'

Both he and John found snickered jokes about some apparent buffoon named Boris Johnson and the cast members of a television programme inexplicably called _Towie_ more interesting than the way he had realised that a bloody scalpel found hidden in the West Kensington Station ticketing hall was connected to their case (CCTV footage showed that the bookie had deliberately walked to the distant end of the platform to board the last car through the last set of doors, and West Ken Station was the only one on that direction and branch of the District Line where the exit was also at the very end—not that they'd cared), and the feelings of warmth and acceptance had faded into resigned complacency.

Being the odd man out and feeling both superior and resentful as a result was nothing to which he wasn't accustomed, though. It didn't account for his unnamed discomfort and restlessness, which seemed to be escalating as the bar continued to fill with revellers.

By quarter to midnight there was little standing-room remaining, he had witnessed an increasing number of people spill drinks on others in the crush, more and more glasses were taking over the tabletop as their owners crowded in around them, and he could see a queue stretching from the doorway down Fulham Road, but John's quid pro quo was compelling enough to keep him in his seat. His friend had chosen his bribe well.

Still, the wait was tedious. A DJ had started a set and the music had grown loud, jarring, over-synthesised, and unfamiliar, and it competed with the muffled roar of the pub's intoxicated patrons and the drone of a television commentator who was recounting an Aussie Rules football match happening ten time-zones away. The cacophony pressed into his eardrums and made it almost impossible to concentrate, to think. If he could only tune out the drone and retreat within his mind, none of the irritating external stimuli would matter, and he wouldn't care that he was surrounded by every incarnation of inebriated human cliché. He counted no less than six couples in drunken embraces within the immediate vicinity, and his lip twitched in distaste. A couple standing right in front of his, John's, and Lestrade's table had started to grapple with blind passion, and though he found them distasteful, he also couldn't seem to look away.

His lips thinned and he rolled his shoulders back, irritated with himself for the hot, prickling sensation of discomfort that watching them caused, and how it seemed to touch upon why he had grown so tense over the course of the past hour. Seeing the slide of a hand down a back, fingers twining into locks of hair, the pliant press and parting of lips was still unappealing to him on a rational level, and yet it sparked something latent and darkly alluring within him.

_But why? _he thought in frustration, and his face pulled into a reflexive scowl as he shifted in his seat. This...susceptibility hadn't been a problem for him before; he had always been above that sort of thing, and he had the experience to substantiate the claim. He had never drunkenly snogged a stranger in a bar (obvious they were strangers), not even during the nadir of his addiction, but he had been to scores of bars identical to this one for the purposes of observation and data collection. During those times he'd had no difficulty in tuning out the over-amplified music and had remained unaffected by the overt, hyper-prevalent sexuality that crackled around him. He'd observed his subjects with the academic detachment of a zoologist then, but now—now his suit constricted in all the wrong places and seemed to chafe against his skin, and his shirt felt far too tight across his chest.

He squeezed his eyes together and scanned his memory for reasons why he might now feel unsettled in this type of environment, for what could have happened to account for this new (unwelcome) sensitivity to other people's lust, and almost as soon as he had made the inquiry, the answer came to him.

Oh. _Obvious_. The Woman had happened.

He felt his shoulders square and his spine lengthen at the thought of her, and his hand shot out to grasp the glass in his hand, though he did manage to refrain from actually drinking any of the spirit. Still, he swiped at the condensation on the tumbler in agitation and swallowed as he sensed an uptick in BPM that even the thought of her caused.

It had been several years since he had first met the enigmatic and magnetic Ms. Adler and the rubric of his life had shifted in a way he'd never anticipated, but it had been even longer since he'd felt the need to refresh his familiarity with young adults' socio-sexual rituals and patterns of inebriation. Before meeting The Woman he had been a somewhat different man. His younger self had been committed to the ascetic's choice to abstain from anything sensual, mostly so as not to bias results through personal involvement, but also because he couldn't imagine himself relating to someone in that way and he didn't think it necessary to feign the acts when he could observe from apart. And when he had, he had been so ingrained with that mindset that he'd been able to remain unaffected by the sexual energy that had surrounded him.

He still saw the value in that decision and he understood how he had come to make it, but he also had to acknowledge that the insight into certain types of motive he had gained had outweighed any problems his subjectivity might've caused. They were insights he wouldn't have understood if anything had been feigned, so he'd been right in that sense, but he had long-since acknowledged and accepted that all his sentiments for The Woman were genuine. He now knew what it was like to feel passionate enough about someone to kill for that person, and in theory he could extrapolate from that same intensity of feeling to understand why someone could also kill the person they loved. He wouldn't hesitate to kill for The Woman if he had to—and he had been prepared do so in Karachi, before they'd even become intimate. Nonetheless, with the knowledge and understanding that came with sexual experience came the loss of a certain type of imperviousness as well.

His eyes narrowed as he recalled how much time he had spent in bars, drinking holes, and even brothels in the past two years that were all far coarser than this place, and how he hadn't been struck by this uncomfortable awareness. But then, on those occasions he had been occupied with work, whether it was to keep someone under surveillance, gather intel on local rumours, use a card game to achieve all manners of ends, or plant seeds of like or dislike to be sowed later in the plan in operation at the time. So lack of mental occupation must be partially to blame as well.

He gave John's face a furtive glance, then slid his phone out of his jacket pocket. He'd attempted to pass the time this way earlier and John had made him put it away, but his friend was well past noticing now. Both his and Lestrade's faces had adopted the rosy glow of intoxication, and Sherlock noted the glassy sheen of their eyes and the escalating volume of their voices and laughter. With a small, grim smile he turned back to his phone, and accessed his inbox.

He was halfway into an intriguing email about a blackmail letter found inside a locked safety deposit box, when a warm current of air wafted across his face, and without warning the dark, chaotic setting of the bar vanished along with his preliminary thoughts on the case, and he was knocked sideways into a part of his Mind Palace that was comprised of pristine white furniture and was bathed in bright, golden light.

He blinked in shock and was back at their cluttered table again. The surrounding noise returned to full volume as if someone had released a mute button, but the sound that dominated everything else was the roar of blood in his ears caused by what he had just experienced, and the scent that had triggered it.

He would know that fragrance anywhere. _Casmir_. It had once so infiltrated his senses that he'd tried to mitigate its affect on him by creating an index of scents on his website. His attempt to incorporate it into his work and therefore neutralise its power over him had not proven successful, as his current reaction to continued to attest.

The slurred chatter to his left paused for a moment and in his peripheral vision, Sherlock saw John's grey-blond head turn towards him.

"Sherlock, you all right?" John's eyes darted down at Sherlock's untouched drink, then back up to his face, his expression a question.

Sherlock barely registered it, and didn't bother with giving any acknowledgement. He had half-risen from the table, and his eyes were darting erratically across the crowd.

Plenty of women wore that perfume, he reasoned with himself. The research he had done for the index had shown that over the previous decade her preferred scent had remained a consistent high-seller; it did not—could not—mean anything.

It provided the best explanation for his restless mood, however. It wasn't just the combination of sexual experience and lack of mental occupation that had contributed to his uneasiness; he must have unconsciously detected the perfume, and it had filtered the way he perceived the interactions of the couples around them, making him relate in a way that he never would've without its influence. Scent was, after all, the most triggering sense in terms of mood and specific memory. The olfactory bulb nestled close to the amygdala, which processed emotion, and the hippocampus, where associative learning took place.

And even before The Woman was anything more than a fascination to him, he had forged a conditioned memory that linked that scent with her. The fragrance had lingered in the fibres of his coat for weeks after she had returned it, and every movement had sent it wafting upward, instantly reminding him of her clever, watchful eyes and her smile that said she was enjoying a private joke, probably at his expense. It had made it impossible to forget how he had been physically attracted to her, even while her texts served to remind him of her intellectual allure as well. Still, he hadn't had the coat dry-cleaned, just as he hadn't changed the sound of her personalised text alert.

Those early interactions would forever influence how he saw her and define their dynamic, and they in turn were inextricably linked to that scent, so that it evoked all his subsequent memories as well. It was layered over everything, infusing all with a distinct, intoxicating allure—much in the same way it had her skin.

Yet that didn't mean that the inverse was true: that whenever the scent of Casmir was present, she was as well. What an accommodating world _that_ would be.

He looked into John's concerned blue eyes and felt foolish. To cover his embarrassment, he raised the glass, made a smile that felt and probably looked more like a grimace, and took one long pull of the smoky, searing liquid. Almost at once he felt light-headed, and though the jagged irritation he felt at the din of the bar and the crush of too many people receded and mellowed, the secondary sensation amplified into a palpable sense of yearning. It wasn't necessarily a longing for something physical, or at least not only that; it was also a long-familiar desire for the easy mutual understanding Lestrade and John shared now.

He had friends, even—somehow, implausibly—a best friend, but there was only one person with whom he'd ever had perfect simpatico, with whom he could share a look and be confident that the full meaning of his intent had been understood, and who could see the entire spectrum of who he was rather than the carefully-curated portrayal he felt comfortable showing—who saw beyond his battle armour, so to speak. But God knew where in the world The Woman really was now.

The heater above the door sent another sandalwood and citrus–scented wave in his direction and then she _was_ there, in image after image that materialised in his mind as if from a projector he couldn't shut off. Her smooth, ivory legs wrapped around a tangled flat-sheet in the high-rise apartment of a CFO out of town for a stakeholders conference. Her triumphant expression when he couldn't come up with a retort to something she had said. The rare but not unfamiliar glimpse of depth in her eyes when she looked into his, her face serious and tender. Her laugh, low, melodious, and amused.

His eyes flew open and he felt a nauseating injection of adrenaline into his bloodstream at that last memory, which hadn't been an image conserved in his memory at all. It had been sound, live and immediate, and it had come from metres away.

Without thinking he jumped to his feet again, upsetting the table and spattering beer everywhere, and he ignored John and Lestrade's surprised shouts to search through the crowd once more. His eyes snapped from face to face, looking for blue eyes and a sharp smile, but all he saw were gyrating bodies, flashes of pink and blue lights glinting off the rims of glasses, and blank, inebriated grins.

He clenched his teeth, ready to conclude that the physiological architecture of his brain must be overriding the logical order of his mind, to make him believe The Woman was in the bar when such a thing was impossible. Usually the infrastructure and superstructure worked in productive harmony, but of course The Woman would cause an exception to that, as she did so many things.

Then, through a crevice in the churning dance floor, he caught a flash of piercing eye contact as well as a fleeting glimpse of a turning face and a curve of cheekbone. People shifted, and the thin line of sight closed again before he had could cognitively process what he had seen, but the sight was so familiar that a fraction of a second was all he needed to_instinctively_ recognise it—recognise her. Every conscious thought vanished from his mind, and for a moment he felt that the place had become a vacuum, and all oxygen had been sucked from the room.

He heard John say his name as if from a great distance, and somewhere off to his left, Lestrade exclaimed in an over-loud and under-enunciated voice that Sherlock looked as if he'd seen a ghost.

If he hadn't been so staggered by what he'd just seen, he would have found that amusing. After all, hadn't he? Either a ghost by all legal standards, or, more likely, one of his own mind.

But which was it? He broke out of his shock-induced paralysis and craned his neck to sweep his eyes over the crowd, and to his disbelief he saw a sleek dark head manoeuvring towards the door. The sight combined with the alcohol and the lingering scent in a heady mix, and pushed thoughts that he only indulged in total privacy to the forefront of his mind.

"I have to go," he said, his voice low and tight.

Lestrade and John both started asking inarticulate, overlapping questions, but Sherlock had already pulled on his coat and without a glance in their direction, he took a breath and breached the pub's growing crush.

He fought his way towards the exit and at more than one point heard a curse, but he pressed forward against the resistance with a frustrated growl, ignoring the seeping wetness on the right forearm of his coat. People pushed in from all sides with relentless pressure and he was afraid he had lost all sight of the Woman-shaped apparition, but then for another miraculous fraction of a second a sliver of space opened before him. Through it he saw the arc of a hip of a painfully familiar and attractive proportion, and the wink of red soles.

He pushed forward with even more determination through the crowd, managing to stay on his feet when someone shoved hard back against him, and he finally broke through the last resisting barrier of drunken revellers, and stumbled out onto the pavement and into the cold January air. It was jarring, but he welcomed the way the chill cooled his flushed face and seemed to sober him.

He sensed a few smokers and queuers look at him askance, but he ignored them, straightened, and then spun first one way and then another under the streetlight, looking for The Woman's seductive saunter or expectant gaze. But she was nowhere to be seen, and he stood panting, at a loss for a moment, before he wheeled around on the nearest smoker.

"Woman—a woman," he barked with his hand outstretched. "Did you see a woman come through here, just now? Brunette... attractive."

The man exchanged a glance with his female companion. "Mate, even if I did I wouldn't tell you," he retorted, giving Sherlock a mistrustful look.

Sherlock felt his lip curl and his hands contract into fists, and he began to advance on the younger man, filled with sudden, irrational malice that this insignificant person should attempt to stand in between him and The Woman.

"Problem?" he heard a rough voice ask, and he glanced up to his right to see a very large, very stupid looking man in security black take a step towards him.

With difficulty Sherlock managed to contain his flare of rage, and he lifted his chin and tugged his coat straight.

"Not at all," he said through clenched teeth, "but _you_ might want to consult a GP on that inflammation in your right ankle. A man in your chosen 'profession' could hardly afford gout."

As he turned sharply away from the dim surprise on the doorman's face, he felt the buzzing of his phone against his thigh and knew it was John, but he didn't answer. Instead he continued his search, now scanning the face of every person who passed by him, everyone waiting at the bus stop, and even the people eating at the garish late night kebab and fried chicken restaurants—despite the unlikelihood that he would ever find her in a place like that.

When John found him, he was leaning against a brick wall and smoking the cigarette he'd charmed off of a passing woman.

"What was all that about?" John asked. "If you really didn't want to stay, I get it. You've stuck around long enough and to be honest it's getting to be a bit much for us in there too, and I should be getting back home. You didn't have to make some dramatic escape. We'll still call it for you, all right?"

Sherlock said nothing, and concentrated on the consolation indulgence of the fag. John looked at it as well, and then peered at him in a maddeningly insightful way he had developed—a definite disadvantage to Sherlock's methods rubbing off on him. After a moment his expression of concern returned, as well as a touch of compassion.

"Or... who'd you see in there?" he asked.

Sherlock couldn't help it, he let out a premature breath of smoke then glanced over at John with a sharp jerk. John shrugged.

"The way you reacted, like you were taking off after someone - we did wonder. Greg insisted it was Moriarty—though obviously he is a bit pissed."

Sherlock relaxed back against the wall. "Oh. Yes. It was something like that, someone from a past case," he said, evasive though not untruthful. "I thought... But I was wrong."

John nodded, and Sherlock added, "That can happen—every few years or so." He glanced at John and attempted a cocksure grin, but wasn't sure whether he pulled it off or not.

"Yeah, I get that. When I first got back to London, after – after everything with Afghanistan... it took me a good while to acclimatise again. It's only been a few months for you, and..."

Sherlock tuned out. He was familiar with John's returning-to-civilian-life story, but moreover thought that the idea that John ever _had_ 'acclimatised' was utter nonsense. Besides, this wasn't the fallout from some traumatic event he'd experienced during his time abroad, it was the aftermath of an international entanglement of a far different nature.

Instead of listening he resumed his scan of the people passing in front of them and his analysis of the strides of the pedestrians across the road. But she wasn't there, she wasn't anywhere, and it was looking ever more likely that he had imagined her. It must have been the combination of the overt sexuality all around them in the bar, the scent of The Woman's perfume, the reminder that while he was accepted by his friends he would never be one of them, sleep deprivation, and the alcohol... And yet he couldn't convince himself that even such a combination of factors would create the near-desperation to see her that he'd felt, so perhaps there was something more at play. Perhaps he had already been missing The Woman, but had managed to keep it compartmentalised, and those factors only enabled what was already present to come to the surface.

Lestrade appeared on the pavement then, looking both harried and concerned. "You all right?"

"Fine," Sherlock spat, his tolerance exhausted. "But I've humoured both of you long enough for tonight, and since I haven't eaten or slept in days..."

Lestrade started nodding as well, and between he and John Sherlock was reminded of the bobble-headed dogs in the café window below his flat. "Fine, yeah, 'night then," he said, the slur in his voice faint but discernible." And good job again today, Sherlock."

Sherlock gave one curt nod, uninterested now in the case he had already solved.

He vaguely heard John ask Lestrade if he were heading towards the Underground, and the other man waffle about how they should ring a patrol car to give them both lifts home. He was recanting with a laugh when Sherlock made a sound of mingled frustration and irritation, and pushed off the wall. He took one final, deep inhale from the cigarette then tossed it aside and strode towards the kerb, where he waved down a taxi that had just turned the corner.

When it pulled to a stop in front of him he climbed into the backseat without another word, feeling too exhausted and unnerved to make any final efforts at sociability. All he could think of was his bed, and The Woman in his bed—_no_. Just the oblivion of sleep, and the hope that when he woke in twelve or so hours he could make sense of what had happened, or better yet, not spare it another thought.

"Good _night_," he heard John call out in the tone reserved for when he thought Sherlock was doing something antisocial, but the best concession Sherlock could make was to lift his hand in a half-hearted farewell before slamming the cab door.

The ride home was a blur of strobing light and dark outside of the window, and the passing landmarks such as Harrods and Wellington Arch were even more superfluous background than usual. Inside the taxi the rumbling white noise of the engine and the constant rocking motion soothed his agitation just enough so that the lurking fatigue could take over, and somewhere along Park Lane his head rolled back onto the leather backrest. He had just dropped into a deep sleep when his text alert sounded, and he registered it but ignored it and slipped back into unconsciousness. When the reminder alert sounded several minutes later while they were barrelling up Gloucester Place he groaned, dug his phone from his pocket, and lifted it to his face.

_Unknown_, the notification said.

His brow creased as he felt some alertness return, and he touched the screen to view the message itself.

Any lingering exhaustion was shocked out of him when he read the text, and he shot forward on his seat, gripping the phone with both hands and staring at the screen with incredulity.

_I've always said that a cold night calls for a hot dinner._

As if by the power of suggestion his body was wracked with a chill that made him shiver involuntarily, which was followed by a sweeping, feverish heat.

He stared at the words, waiting for the letters to rearrange into a different sentence, something mundane and explicable, but they remained fixed in resolute black on white.

He tore his eyes away from the screen because as long as he looked at it he couldn't possibly _think_, and he turned his head to stare out at the passing streets with wide eyes.

From Park Road the cab pulled into the right turn lane for Baker Street, but as it arced out in the turn, he saw something through the window that made even the text message seem irrelevant.

"Stop the cab. _Stop_!" he roared, and his head and then his entire torso whipped back around to try to catch a better look at what had just registered in his mind in the form of a blinding white exclamation point.

The cabbie swore in irritation but brought the vehicle to an abrupt halt, and Sherlock exploded out of the backseat only to freeze in place when he stood, his hand gripping the top of the open door.

Irene Adler was leaning against a brick and Portland stone building on the curved corner where Allsop Place turned into Baker Street, looking for all the world as if they'd made a twelve o'clock appointment, and he were expected.

* * *

><p><strong>Check out my profile for the link to a great photoset by Admeliora, which illustrates the last scene of this chapter.<strong>


	2. Chapter 2

The sight of her spun Sherlock's entire world off its axis.

Or rather, it merged two distinct worlds that he had never expected to even overlap: one of the present, and one of the past... one ruled with an iron fist by his superego and one that had integrated his id.

When he released the taxi door and began to move towards her he felt as if he were still asleep and wading through a dream—the same apocryphal logic seemed to apply. It was only the cabbie's angry outburst of "_Oi_ there!" that made him blink, reach into his pocket for his wallet and then turn to pass a note through the window. The cab accelerated forward with a grinding of gears and Sherlock stared after it until it swerved onto Marylebone Road. Only when it was out of sight did he take a small breath through his mouth, close his eyes for a brief moment, and then face towards Irene Adler again.

Next to his initial shock at the surreal vision of The Woman on Baker Street, his primary response was the same powerful surge of endorphins and adrenaline that he always felt when laying eyes on her for the first time after a lengthy separation. That didn't lessen its impact, however. Despite the precision of his memory, he was never prepared for the vividness of expression, the formidable cunning of her gaze, or the spare beauty of proportion that the real woman possessed. She was no longer just a stand-in confined to his Mind Palace, or a fleeting glance through a dark, seething crowd, or a streak seen through the window of a moving car. She was real and present, and that took his breath away, if only in the very first moment.

His subsequent, but almost simultaneous reaction was a rush of visceral anger that she should jeopardise everything they had done to ensure her survival and ongoing anonymity by coming to London, and that she should be so reckless as to even appear across the road from his flat. But that anger was soon tempered by a voice that reminded him that the compulsion that made her take risks and defy conventions was an expression of the very essence of The Woman that so attracted him. To denigrate one aspect of her character would be to detract from the whole of who she was, and he would prefer her to be nothing but _The_ Woman, and all that entailed. Besides, without the peril she was personally assuming they wouldn't be reuniting now.

He took one final moment to collect himself under the guise of pulling the collar of his coat higher around his face against the icy wind, and then took a step forward, then another, and another, until he was crossing the road towards her on long, brisk strides.

As he drew closer yet another part of him, a very insistent part, envisioned not slowing down but speeding up when he reached her, taking hold of her above the elbows, and using his momentum to crush them both into the side of the building. And then...

He blinked to banish the mental image; it would be better to err on the side of self-control until he could sort out just how these two distinct world fitted together.

Instead he came to a halt two feet in front of her and said, "Ms. Adler, welcome home. Though being out in the open like this is a bit indiscreet." He quickly scanned the area, then turned his serious expression back on her.

"Are you feeling exposed, Mr. Holmes?" she replied, referencing something she had said in their first meeting, and inflecting the last two words with subtle irony. Last time they had seen one another, at an abandoned block of flats where he'd been staying in Turin, they had most definitely been on first-name basis, but that had been Before.

They had almost achieved an approximation of normalcy then—strictly relative to them, of course—but being close to her again now after so long was like returning to a high altitude after months at sea-level. Until he readjusted he would continue to feel dizzy and disorientated.

There was also the matter that during that time she had been informant, confidante and council, distraction, and a lifeline to him... Whereas when he had known her here in London she had been adversary, liar, traitor, and the closest thing to heart-breaker he'd ever experienced, and the collision of all those roles and attributes also provoked the vertigo-like sensation that he could only ever credit to her.

In short, yes, he was feeling very exposed, but it was hardly a new sensation. He always felt that way with her; it was an inevitable consequence of being so seen and understood, and it was additional evidence of how exceptional she was.

Still, he might as well be crossing a chasm in those last few feet that separated them, and he wished that she would do what she did best, and _instigate_.

The image of pressing her up against the building would not be so easily banished with a blink, but she had always been the braver of the two of them in that sense—had always been the one willing to put more of herself on the line, just as she was now by her mere presence. Ever the dominatrix, she often knew what he wanted and liked even before he understood his desires himself, and she could and did draw confidence from that. For him any move would be akin to a gunshot in the dark—a coup if accurate but potentially disastrous if off the mark. She, on the other hand, was a heat-seeking missile, and her effects were just as incendiary.

But to his frustration she only regarded him with a look of patient expectation, and with a flash of dismay he wondered if her hesitation wasn't due to the fact that they'd been separated for months, but because she was letting him set the pace after what he had said to her when they had last parted in Italy. It would've been an unremarkable, perhaps even expected, sort of goodbye if they were a conventional couple, but they were neither one nor the other.

Or so he told himself as he looked down at her, his face stoic and impassive but his stomach churning and a months-dormant heat curling up through his body and warming him against the frigid night air.

The silence stretched out between them, punctuated only by a whoosh of a car or cab heading south, or the distant laughter and raised voices of people hurrying towards the Underground before it shut for the night. He wasn't one to concern himself with saying the 'right' thing in a given situation, but he wasn't above wanting to impress her, either, especially since it had been so long since they'd spoken. Nothing would come. He took in her healthy, vital appearance, and opened his mouth, before closing it again with a faintly audible click of teeth. It would be ordinary and petty for him to comment on her looks. Her literal appearance, on the other hand...

"I did see you there, in West London," he said. "_How_."

She smiled with closed lips up at him over the elegant knot of her sophisticated scarf, and he suspected that his own pupils were dilating as he continued to drink in the sight of her face after being parted for just over a year. That particular smile seemed to fit inside his mind like a key, and light it up. Parts of him that only came to life around her revved higher into gear, and he sensed the concern he'd felt at her brazen return shift into a very different type of tension.

"I didn't want to waste any time," she said with her characteristic illusion of frankness (offering the ostensible why, but not answering his question of _how_), and he paused his ravenous scrutiny of her face to focus on her eyes. "I'm only in London for a single night—I'm acting as a courier for a certain high-level official I know, and the matter is time-sensitive."

His brow furrowed at her words, which immediately made him forget his series of follow-up questions about her appearance in Fulham Broadway.

"A 'courier,'" he repeated sharply. "Of...?"

"Information, of course," she said, enunciating the words with obvious relish, and he clicked his tongue on his teeth and nodded in acknowledgement.

"Emails can be hacked, phones can be bugged, assistants can be bought off..." he said. "But confide in the woman who already knows your every secret whim and desire and still remains discreet, and who also happens to have a number of passports under a variety of different aliases, and suddenly a communication pathway becomes clear."

She nodded in confirmation, looking pleased with him.

"'Business' must be going well, to introduce you to people powerful enough to have need of an errand like this," he noted, and he told himself that the small twist of displeasure he felt at the thought was absurd and puerile.

"Yes it is—and this is a part of it. It isn't just _one_ errand, Sherlock; this one just happens to bring me back here."

"Information trafficking," he said, his voice flat and the displeasure growing. "That's what you're doing now."

"How do you think I knew to tell you about the Surčin clan in Belgrade?"

He scowled. "I was under the impression that you were just back to old practice—that people confided in you in moments of weakness and vulnerability, and you were able to exploit that on my behalf. I didn't realise that you were deliberately entrusted with that information."

"It's so much easier to just pass on information rather than try to withhold it from very interested, very persistent parties who know what you have. And far less potential for fuss at customs than any other type of trafficking." She looked up at him, her eyes sparkling, but he felt his stomach clench as at least fourteen possible repercussions to her new occupation occurred to him, all of which were very nasty.

He shook his head and his initial anger came blazing back, and the severity of _this_ self-imposed risk made it far less dismissible.

"Yes you can breeze through customs, but that should be the least of your concerns. And—yes—networks may be hacked, phones can be tapped, people can be bribed," he snarled, grabbing her elbow. "But keepers of sensitive information can be _tortured_."

She raised her eyebrows. "Concerned?" she asked, taken aback by his anger.

"Aren't you?" he asked through clenched teeth, not bothering to deny it. "At least with your cameraphone you also had a passcode that would detonate your device, and interrogators wouldn't know which you gave them, so that you had some sort of disincentive from getting hurt. But barring the equivalent such as a cyanide capsule," he said in scathing sarcasm, "you can't exactly trigger a failsafe to destroy this information. I didn't take you for someone so reckless. You must realise that it's only a matter of time before people start to catch on. You were all about the long game before, why are you acting so short-sighted now?"

Her expression had gone blank during his tirade, and she pulled her arm from his grasp then said coolly, "The '_long _game' didn't work out as intended."

"Arguably better than did your ad-hoc plans, if you'll recall how I found you in Pakistan," he retorted, feeling a brutal sort of satisfaction at throwing that in her face, even while he knew it might have been unfair. "Word gets around, people talk, make recommendations. You're clearly good at what you do, you'll get a reputation."

"Discretion is a two-way street—my clients understand that," Irene said, her voice resolute. "Each of them believes that I'm doing them a one-time favour because they're especially valued customers, and I make it clear that if they tell anyone what I did for them, not only will that information became public, but so will every degrading thing they've ever begged me to do to them."

He continued to glare at her, nowhere near convinced that that was adequate.

"You didn't seem to mind when it was information that lead you to key members of Moriarty's syndicate," she pointed out.

"As I said, I was under the wrong impression. I didn't know its provenance."

She cocked her head. "That's hardly my fault, is it? You're the brilliant detective; you should've _detected_. Besides, I think we can agree that that wouldn't have changed a thing."

His frown tightened. "You risked everything by sharing that intelligence."

She nodded once, her lips pouted thoughtfully.

"Yes. But isn't that what we both do?" _For each other_, he read in her eyes, as clearly as if she has said it. "For the game?"

After a moment of thought he gave a quiet "Yes" in answer to both the said and unsaid, then sighed. It broke some of the tension.

"You're receiving generous compensation, at least," he said, his voice returning to normal volume. "Since really London's the last place you should be."

"Oh it should go without saying that I am, but that hardly influenced my decision. The risk is part of the reason I accepted this job," she said, then repeated, "It's what you and I do."

At that she tipped her head back against the wall with her usual casual elegance, and the barrier between them dissipated even more so that he sensed the pull between them intensify. Because again the phrase held the double meaning: yes, they both relished a good challenge from their work, but this was also another risk she had assumed for the sake of them. His heart, which had managed to resume a somewhat regular rhythm, lurched hard again, and he felt a dizzying rush of infatuation (or... perhaps something more complex) for her, as well as the thrill of fear that still always preceded his loss of control with her.

She released his gaze to look around them with interest. "And I have to say, it is good to be home." She looked back into his eyes. "Isn't it?"

"Yes. Although... it's been more of an adjustment than I'd assumed," he admitted.

Her expression softened, and became almost tender. It was a glimpse of the woman she had become to him since they had both acknowledged and given in to their mutual attraction and sentiment, years ago now and on the other side of the world. From the corner of his eyes he saw her lift her arm, and his heart-rate sped up even further in anticipation of (_at last_) her touch.

She stretched her hand to his face and traced two fingers down the side of his cheek in a caress that expressed the sentiment before she spoke the words:

"Yes, a lot has changed—but also nothing has changed. Do you understand?" she asked, and her fingertips came to a light rest on his collarbone.

His automatic reaction to her trading coded sentiment for sincerity was the desire to contradict her, to tell her that she shouldn't presume to speak for both of them, and that perhaps things had changed for him. But he knew that she would see through that pretence in an instant, and know it for the equivocating it would be. His angry concern for her safety minutes before made any denial useless.

"Brushing up on philosophy when you're not passing international secrets?" he asked drily, deflecting instead.

"I'll take that as a yes," she said, her voice deepening into a purr, and he opened his mouth to reply, but she raised her index finger and pressed it to his lips.

"Mm, time for you to shut up now," she murmured, then drew the finger down over his chin.

A pleasurable chill raced through him at her words and the way she spoke them, and as he always and inevitably did each time they reunited he gave in to her, and by extension, his own desire.

Breathing out a low exhale, Sherlock stepped forward to close the last small gap between them and loom above her petite form. He tilted his head forward and swept his eyes over her face, which was raised to his and close enough that he could catalogue all the various signs of desire on it. They noticeably increased with his proximity and he gave a faint, pleased smirk at that, even while he felt his own responses rioting in answer. Then, looking directly into her eyes, he wrapped one arm around her waist and one hand around the back her neck, and pulled her up to him to press his mouth against hers.

While the first moment when he laid eyes on the Woman always came along with an endorphin high, it was nothing compared with the first real physical contact after months of deprivation. First it soothed all the desires that had built and escalated in her presence, and then it set them ablaze.

Irene made a soft noise in the back of her throat and slid one arm around his shoulders to thread her fingers into the curls at the base of his head, then pressed her nails into his scalp. It was just sharp enough of a bite to make him gasp against her lips, and he felt hers bend into a smile in answer, before she tilted her face to recapture his and then deepen the kiss.

It felt the way the scotch that was still on his tongue tasted: smooth but infused with searing heat, and promising imminent intoxication. Giving a low moan, he tightened his arm around her waist so that she was hauled to her toes even in her already towering heels. Her hand in his hair tightened in response, tugging at the follicles, and he tore his mouth away from hers to press it under her jaw and trail a chain of hot, moist kisses down her throat.

With his mouth on her skin and her hands in his hair, all the months of their separation and distance and all the work he had done to become "Sherlock Holmes of 221B Baker Street" again dissolved, along with any and all the concerns that seeing her again had raised.

Her faint, husky sigh drew him back to her parted lips, and as their mouths melted together again he instinctively pressed his body into hers until she was pushed up against the building. A small portion of his mind noted that this is what he had wanted since he'd first seen her leaning here, but then she nudged back against him with a well-aimed roll of her hips and all the higher processes of his mind temporarily shut down.

The spell broke some time later when a passing group of teenagers wolf-whistled and called out suggestive comments, and breathing hard, they pulled apart, but their shared gazes remained glued and unwavering, if also unfocused.

For the second time since they'd reunited he couldn't think of a single thing to say, but now he didn't feel that the situation called for any words. The prickling agitation that had so bothered him at the pub-turned-bar had vanished, and had been replaced with a sense of contentment. Though he had experienced a similar feeling earlier that evening with his friends, this was far more poignant and sustainable. It grew from the bond of unconditional understanding he shared with The Woman, and it was what he had yearned for in that moment with John and Lestrade, realised.

"Mmm. Happy New Year," she hummed, looking up into his eyes through hooded lids, and after a moment he recalled that those had been the words of the first—and for a very long time, only—text he'd ever sent her. He was certain that the reference was intentional, and it illustrated how much could change in three years. It also showed just how much hadn't changed at all: The Woman was almost as much a mystery to him now as she had been on that previous midwinter's night, and that was one of the highest compliments he could pay her.

"You're a bit late," he said with an amused huff, referring to her response to his now years-old message as well as the fact that it was already well into January.

The hand that he had settled on her shoulder lifted to her face, and he cupped her cheek, tracing the line of her jaw with his thumb and keeping his eyes fixed on her mouth.

"Afraid it couldn't be helped," she murmured in a throaty voice. "I was tied up with that high-level diplomat I mentioned."

He gave a small and distracted smile, then bent down and kissed her again. Her mouth was soft under his for the length of several heartbeats, then she nipped his lower lip and looked up at him through long, black lashes.

"Well. The reverse, actually." She gave him a wicked smile that transmitted directly to his groin, and his hand tightened on her waist.

"Not such a happy new year for him," he said, his voice rough.

"On the contrary," she corrected. "But never mind, forget about him." She stroked her fingers down his torso, making his abdominal muscles jump under his shirt, and the hair on his arms rise. "Are you going to invite me in?"

Frowning at the abrupt realisation that for caution's sake he should've done that before they'd even exchanged their first words, he shed his coat in one smooth flourish and settled it around her shoulders. Her hair was a style different from any he'd seen before, so that wouldn't be as immediate a tell as it once might've been. However she hadn't shed all her signatures; that audacious flash of red would be an instant giveaway if anyone were watching them, though at least the shade wouldn't appear on the greyscale feed of the public cameras.

_And let's hope for some sectarian uprising to occupy Mycroft away from a random, casual intrusion_, he thought, his mental tone wry but the sentiment genuine.

"Shoes off and under the coat," he instructed. "And collar up around your face."

She looked amused at his commanding voice but complied, then raised a pert eyebrow at him. The expression drew attention to the fact that he'd had her recreate the secondary look she'd assumed when they'd first met, and it put additional speed in his steps as they crossed the road.

He had long ago determined which approaches to his flat best evaded CCTV, and had paid off members of his homeless network to routinely vandalise those with the most direct views towards his building, but at points when being recorded was unavoidable he shielded her, or angled her body away with a hand to the small of her back that he didn't drop even after they'd passed through.

He suspected that with some distance it might occur to him that he had permitted lust and sentiment to cloud his judgment, just as it had moments before, but he rationalised to himself that she had introduced the risk before he had even arrived at Baker Street, and now he could only minimise potential damage. Though yes: he wanted her and wanted to be with her, and this was hardly the riskiest thing they had ever done together—not by a long shot.

When they did step onto the landing in front of his building he drew out his keys, then looked back at her over his shoulder. He was unsmiling but knew that she would see the humour in his eyes when he asked, "So would you prefer to enter the front door this time, or can I offer you a leg up?"

Without hesitation she replied, "Oh Mr. Holmes – both."

He gave a low hum of appreciation, and unlocked the door. The moment he was through the entrance he turned on the spot and pulled her in roughly by the wrist, his mouth descending on hers again at once. He rarely caught her unawares and he exploited the fraction of a second that her jaw went slack, twining his fingers into her hair to angle her face against his and pushing his tongue past her parted teeth.

She opened her mouth further and he didn't hesitate to intensify the kiss, while she slid her hands under the lapels of his suit jacket and started to shove the material from his shoulders. Without breaking away contact he rolled his shoulders back to help her shrug him out of it, and it fell to the floor where it was immediately forgotten.

Making a breathy noise of satisfaction that was unduly attractive to him, she smoothed her palms down the length of his back, then began to tug his shirt from his trousers.

He caught her hands in his and crossed them behind her back, pulling her tightly to him so that he could feel the outline of her breasts for the first time in months. Even while his rational self was lost in the kiss his body was hyper-receptive and aware; here was that part of him that he had so uncomfortably repressed earlier in the bar, unfurling after he'd kept it tamped down all these months, and the thrill of giving into it pounded in his veins.

They broke apart a moment later, both breathing hard, and he stared down at her, her face upturned and her hair askew in haphazard strands. In many ways her face was more familiar to him than his own, and yet still he could never look at her enough. He was one of the most observant people in the world, and yet each time he gazed into her eyes he saw something new and enthralling.

The moment lengthened and something in her expression changed and deepened, and when she tilted her chin by two degrees he understood and acquiesced.

When their lips came together next it was gentle, soft, and slow, and communicated the mutual depth of feeling that was the foundation for all of their lust. When they had reunited for the first time since Karachi it had taken them months to rediscover that particular kiss, and it was still rare. More than even the most uninhibited sex, this laid him bare to her, and vice-versa.

When it reached its conclusion she slid around him with a feather-light caress down his spine that made him shiver, slowly drew off her gloves, and then threw him a look of explicit invitation over her shoulder as she made her way up the stairs.

If he hadn't still been immersed in the aftermath of that particular kiss he would've smirked, because of course she would take the lead even in his own home. Instead he followed, further absorbed by the sway of the perfect ellipses that were her hips.

When they reached the upper landing he opened the door for her, and she strode inside, looking around.

"So. No more John Hamish Watson," she said, then turned to him and cocked her head to the side, watching him.

"No," he replied. He would go into greater detail about his current arrangement with John and his feelings on it later—perhaps tomorrow; now was not the moment. With so little time that was theirs alone, he wasn't about to shift focus to someone else.

"Which means... we have this entire place to ourselves," she went on with the barest suggestion of his favourite smile, and she sauntered over to his sofa, then turned to face him. "Any ideas in that big sexy brain of yours?"

"One or two," he said in a low, tight voice, and he crossed the room to join her. She stood in place and watched him approach, raising her chin as he drew closer to maintain their eye contact.

He reached up to tangle his fingers into her scarf, then pulled it away from her throat and dragged it down her chest, running the back of his hand over one breast. He rubbed the swathe of fabric between his index finger and thumb then tossed it aside, having mined all the data he needed.

Now that some of the initial overwhelming rush of seeing her had calmed into a more manageable buzz, he could look beyond her mere presence, and read where she had been in the months since he had last seen her.

This is also what they did.

He found that using all of his senses to study her body, in order to slowly but thoroughly discover where she had been when they were apart, was equally as if not more intimate than undressing her one article at a time, and just as arousing as any other type of foreplay. It was something that was theirs together, and only theirs.

They were well matched, though their approaches varied. While his methodology was clinical and detail-orientated, she often got to the truth by manipulating him into revealing too much—usually through intellectual, emotional, or sexual provocation, or a potent combination of all three. Seeing the exquisite way her mind worked, particularly in the context of their physical relationship, made sex all the more personalised and stimulating, and he was disappointed that she couldn't have a turn now, since she knew precisely where he had been these past months.

Still, he could.

He leaned down to her, savouring the moment of anticipation, before he brushed his lips against the outer shell of her ear. He was gratified to see her give a slight shiver.

"When you were 'tied up'," he said, his voice low and warm.

"Mm?" she said, reaching for his hands to entwine her fingers with his.

"You were in the northwest part of the island of Borneo."

He pulled back to see that her eyes were cast down and her lips were curved into a smile of pleased expectation, which he knew from experience was an invitation for him to continue.

"The Sultanate of Brunei," he stated, confident again with this familiar, though always exhilarating, territory. "The eastern, more elevated region, to be more specific; near the capital but not quite in it. Perhaps a country chateau outside of the city—discreet and scenic, but close enough to reach the office should the need arise, given you mentioned a high-ranking government official..."

She looked up with eyes that smouldered in a way he recognised, and which both his mind and his body found stimulating in equal measure. The union of the clever and the provocative, it was both who she was and what she liked, and through her it had become what he liked as well.

_Understatement_, an avid voice in his mind said, as she used their joined hands to push him to a seat in the centre of the sofa, then slid forward to straddle his lap, her knees pressing into the worn leather on either side of his hips.

"And what makes you think that?" she asked, her face hovering inches above his and her blue eyes dark and encouraging.

Aside from the divested scarf and gloves she was still dressed for the cold, but there were a few observations available to him. He released her hands and ran his palms down the tops of her thighs and then skimmed his fingertips back up underneath them, then repeated the circuit, drawing out the moment.

"You were wearing a ceremonial textile called a _pua kumbu_, as a scarf—_tsk, bad_," he said lazily, and looked up at her through his own darkened eyes, then lifted his arm to curl his fingers through the ends of her hair and tug.

She rolled her head back into the pull, exposing her long, graceful throat, and Sherlock's mind swam from the powerful eroticism of the combined intellectual and physical stimuli.

"And judging by the weft of the cotton and the fading of the dye, I'd say it's at least a hundred years old," he continued, though a bit more breathless. "There's only one region in the world that such an object would originate, and that the state of Sarawak, in the part of Malaysia located on Borneo. They're considered rare and valuable cultural objets, especially one as old and in as fine condition as this one, so it would make sense that a 'high-level official from the area would give it to you as a token. But what would you be doing in Sarawak, a region almost no one outside that geopolitical area knows about let alone cares about, where there would be no one with sufficient power to entice you—when Brunei is just next door?"

She gave a small hum of encouragement, and the sound threatened to derail him.

"One of the wealthiest states in the world, and devout enough to appreciate your particular stock-in-trade: boundary-pushing liaisons, but no actual sex," he said, still determined to finish before she could distract him entirely, which she was doing her best to accomplish. She had managed to get his shirt the rest of the way free from his trousers, and was tracing the edge of her index finger down the seam of his fly with the barest hint of pressure. He only took it as a sign that he was correct, and she was resorting to dirty tactics in order to salvage a win—or at least a draw.

He stared at her finger before snapping his eyes back up to hers, and he saw that she was watching him with a pronounced smirk on her face; it was almost identical an expression to one she sometimes wore when there were no barriers between them and she had him worked up just to the edge of climax.

"A cross—er—crossroads for many of the world's most wealthy and powerful players, and yet far enough away from London both geologically and culturally that you would enjoy relative anonymity," he ground out. "Your gloves are a special type of very fine silk, from the_ Bombyx mori_ moth, which isn't exclusive to Brunei but is prevalent there."

She dropped her head and pressed her lips just below his ear in a kiss that made his pulse spike, then brushed her mouth along the side of his neck, before ending with a sensuous kiss above where his shirt opened at his collarbone.

"You also have new. . . earrings. And by the. . . warmth of the silver shade of the metal it could be platinum, palladium, or. . . white gold," he managed, and the pitch of his voice had dropped part of an octave. He felt the words rumble in his chest as he spoke them, and noticed how her breath caught and then sped up at that, which in turn made his own quicken. "You've worn them for at least several days judging by the small vertical creases in your earlobes, and slight scuffs say that they're not as hard as platinum, and so they're probably white gold. That region has a number of gold mines, and I've noticed a predilection of yours for jewellery as souvenirs."

"And the chateau, how did you get that?" she asked, her eyes warm and her pupils blown wide, and she began to work her hands down his chest, undoing his shirt, then lightly scraping her nails down the skin she revealed.

He paused to watch her through half-open eyes, appreciating the symmetry in how he revealed her bit by bit through his deductions as she gradually revealed his body by undressing him. He reached up and slid his hands down her arms, feeling her muscles work and flex under his palms as she unfastened each button.

"Do you forfeit that question?" she prompted after a moment that was silent except for the sound of his heavy breathing, and he blinked languorously.

"It's a bit dim, but I can tell that the skin on your face appears redder and drier than usual, suggesting that you've been at a higher altitude, where ultraviolet rays are much stronger," he recited unevenly, his eyes transfixed by her lips, and his body starting to feel heavy and taut with desire. "You use a sheer foundation with incorporated SPF, but that factor isn't strong enough to withstand increased UV, and your skin type easily burns. Hence the more elevated region, which is close to the capital city of Bandar Seri Begawan."

His mind went blank and it took him several seconds realise that he had reached the end of his deductions.

"It all fits," he concluded in a blend of cockiness and gratified relief.

"Mmm," said Irene, and she bent in close, creating fantastic friction in the process. "Very thorough," she murmured, her breath hot against his ear.

He exhaled through his mouth, then brushed his hands down her side to grip her hips, and pull her down more firmly against him. "Thank y—"

"And very, very _wrong_," she cut in, then pulled his earlobe into her mouth and scraped her teeth over it before settling back on his thighs, her face radiant with triumph and arousal.

A frisson of electricity jolted through him from the pleasurable, wet contact, and delayed his reaction to what she'd said.

When her words did hit him his eyes widened and he gave a small frown. "What—_all_ of it," he asked.

She gave a hum of confirmation and leaned down to give him a light but very sensuous kiss, then pulled her lips away from his just far enough to murmur, "Everything else aside – why else might my face look that way? And this time, Sherlock, it might be better if you didn't think at all..."

The furrow between his brow deepened at that, but he laid his head back against the cushions of the sofa and cast his eyes over her face. He noticed that her lips, which were partially open and showing a glint of white teeth, were wet and swollen from their kisses, her eyes were black pool surrounded by the thinnest band of blue, and the pulse in her carotid artery was bold and visible. Taking in all the obvious signs of her physical excitement made him consider the last part of the equation, and then it clicked.

It didn't reveal where she had been, but that didn't seem to matter nearly as much as where she was in the present moment: in his lap and slowly, deliberately rotating her hips.

"You aren't sunburnt... it's vasodilation. You're flushed," he said, his voice strained with arousal from how provocative she looked, and the fact that she had outmanoeuvred him.

He reached up to cradle her cheek in his hand, and felt the heat radiating into his skin.

"Now we're getting somewhere," she answered huskily, leaning into his touch.

She reinforced her point by slipping her hand under the band of his pants at the small of his back, sliding her fingertips along the edge and then smoothing over it again in a maddening pattern, her touch just a whisper against his flesh. It was just enough to stimulate all of his nerve endings and send blood rushing to the surface of his skin and elsewhere, but not nearly enough to satisfy the hunger for her that was growing more voracious by the second.


	3. Chapter 3

**This entire chapter is rated M. If you don't like that kind of thing you can skip ahead to the final chapter. To everyone else, enjoy ;)**

* * *

><p>With a faint grunt, Sherlock pushed off of the back cushions just enough to catch The Woman's lips with his, and as their mouths fitted together she slid her hands up his sides, causing him to give a slight, unconscious shudder. She continued to skim them up to his shoulders, then reached out to grab the top of the sofa frame behind his head, and with her arms bracketing either side of his head she used her grip to haul herself against him. Her expression was engaged, and more watchful and sultry than playful. There were times that she wore a faint, smug smile throughout, but this would not be one of those occasions.<p>

He gave a low huff at her motion, and his hands flew up to her hips to grasp them as if he could tether himself to her against the vertigo that had been intensifying since he'd first scented her perfume. He then drew back his hands to slide them between the front flaps of the greatcoat she still wore, and beneath, the material of her trousers was fine enough that he could feel the heat of her skin radiating against his palms when he held her thighs. His grip almost spanned across the tops of her legs and he dug in his fingertips then dragged them roughly towards him, pulling her legs tight against either side of his waist as he did so.

After such a long period of deprivation, the close and very intimate contact caused his heart to feel as though it were pulsing inside his trachea, making his exhales sound even more shallow and harsh.

On either side of his shoulders he felt her biceps tighten, as she used her hold on the sofa to react to his assertive touch by pulling herself roughly against him again, and grinding downward. Her tongue in his mouth became aggressive as well, and his head fell back against her forearms as she pressed over him. His eyelids fluttered closed and then squeezed together, and as much as he could from his position pinned under her, he matched her ardour with his own blind, instinctive passion. They became entwined in their own private world of heat, adrenaline, and touch, and everything else fell away, including all sense of passing time.

As they moved together on the cushions in a sort of shared delirium, Sherlock felt the pleasure he gained from the physical completely subsume the rush he got from the mental stimulation she always so effortlessly offered. The verbal stage of foreplay was over, but it was always only the beginning; it had been the transition from the cerebral into the base physical that they both needed to get to this point, but by no means was it all that they wanted now that they were here.

While the higher workings of his mind had stilled and gone quiet, his body felt receptive, raw, and full of a vitality even more youthful than his actual age warranted, all of which were the physiological symptoms of being in the thrall of a fresh and promising new puzzle. Except of course that in this case all his finely-honed senses weren't to be utilised and employed in service of his work, but could exist simply to experience pleasure for its own sake.

Only The Woman could take the cerebral and transmogifry it into physical desire; it was her unique brand of reverse alchemy that distilled flame from gold.

The frivolity of that errant thought partly woke him from his lust-induced spell, and he realised that at some point she had worked her fingertips under the shirt of his collar, and was now tugging at it. He lifted his arms and she pulled the fabric the rest of the way off, and when it was lying in a pile by their feet he wrapped his bare arms around her. One arm crossed her lower back and one stretched over her shoulder blades, enveloping her in a tight embrace as they continued to kiss.

The texture of the fabric that rubbed against his inner arms was highly familiar and personal; the material was for him both a second skin and the armour he donned each day in order to take on the battlefield that was the streets of London. At first it felt strange that he should feel it from the other side—the outside—and yet he realised that there was a logic to the fact that she wore it in this context. There was the obvious, already-noted symmetry that it created between their first encounter and this one. But he also felt that there was a metaphor to be drawn from the way she retained his literal and metaphorical outer layer against the world as he was incrementally more bared by her, though he was too far distracted by lust to refine it.

On that baser level, he understood that having her wear his coat and remain fully covered as he was undressed was a minor power play of the sort that The Woman occasionally liked to introduce, and which he admittedly enjoyed as well. It didn't require much mental acuity (which was—good, in his current state) to understand why he found pleasure in it. It was a mixture of narcissism and the gratification he found in the way her mind and personality worked. It also highlighted all the ways in which they were a Mobius strip personified: at once both the same yet opposites.

As he dipped his head to press a series of haphazard, open-mouth kisses along her throat he cast his eyes across her and down, and he had to admit that the image of her in the too-large garment also seemed to feed into some primitive and very eager part of his brain.

He wasn't prone to fantasies; on the rare occasion he felt the need for physical gratification he preferred to recall a particularly erotic memory and relive it moment by moment. During even fewer of those occasions he would turn to the more overt visual stimulus of pornography, but the brunettes on the screen were always an appalling substitute for the woman he actually wanted. He found the infinite differences in body type and skin colour and texture frustrating distractions, but even worse was the flatness and vacancy of all the actresses. Their eyes lacked the spark of brilliance and playful defiance that were such constants in The Woman's expression, and he was always left feeling unfulfilled and vaguely repulsed when he gave in to that particular fix. But _this_ specific visual was pure provocation to him, and was something he recognised had been lurking in his subconscious for quite some time—possibly since that first day they had met.

Ah, it was more than a power play then, more than about him being stripped and she keeping and remaining concealed by his adult version of a security blanket. Certainly that was part of it—the woman was almost never wholly altruistic in any way, including with sex—but this was also about her knowing what he liked. Unlike him, she had never found him a challenge to her talents and, obvious benefits aside, that alone was impossibly arousing.

At a natural rest they parted, and he glanced up through heavy lids to read her expression. Her eyes were dark, her brow furrowed, her mouth parted, and he dropped his gaze to see that the blush on her cheeks had crept down her throat and over her collarbone to spread below the coat lapels. In his mind's eye he could see her breasts, which he knew would be equally suffused with pink, and he swallowed against the tight knot that formed in his throat at the image.

He turned his attention further downward to the slim-fitted trousers she wore, and nimbly unlatched the clasp with a twist of his wrist. He hooked his fingers inside the waist and yanked the fabric down, and she opened her eyes to pin her gaze to his as she lifted one leg at a time so that he could push the material past her knees.

After he straightened from pulling them off the rest of the way she straddled flush against him again, and the bared skin of her inner thighs pressed against either side of his waist. The warm contact ignited something even hotter within him, and he made a low, emphatic sound in the back of his throat then reached under the coat to tear at the scrap of underwear she wore. After he had pulled them only halfway down her thighs he abandoned them in place to trace his fingertips partway back up the soft, delicate skin.

Her eyes drew into abrupt focus and in addition to the darkened look of lust he saw the blazing, calculating expression that always sent a powerful throb of anticipation through his body. When she stretched her hand down as well his breath came to a halt and then heaved out again a beat later, and with an expedient flick she undid the hook and fly of his trousers.

Hip lips twitched but he managed to confine his response to that one subtle tic. He continued to meet her challenging gaze as he traced the fingertips of both hands farther up her inner thighs, and ran them teasingly along the creases where legs met body.

In response she lowered her face to his until she was mere inches away, and though his eyes dropped from hers to her mouth and his lips parted in anticipation of a kiss, she remained just out of reach.

In the narrow space between them they shared hot, panting breaths for a moment, before she raised an eyebrow and then reached inside his fly to trace a delicate outline over his underwear. His abdominal muscles jumped at the light but direct touch, and he sent a heavy gust of air through his nose, causing her expression to grow even more predatory.

Their flirtatious verbal sparring may have been put aside for the time-being, but the combative facet of their relationship remained. Their interaction was a constant ebb and flow between total simpatico and competition, and for the majority of their encounters The Woman wielded the edge in some way or another—though he was now the first to make direct erotic contact. When he did, she finally closed the distance between them and kissed his lips open with her own, before angling her head to deepen the connection.

She leaned her weight onto the forearm still braced on his shoulder as he continued to move his fingers against her in the way he knew _she_ liked, starting with the barest touch and then escalating in pressure. For several moments she accepted the pleasure, responding only by assertively meeting his tongue with her own and swivelling her hips against his hand.

He knew that she derived great enjoyment from seeing him lose composure and shake apart under her touch, and he found just as much gratification out of witnessing her do the same. The rush of satisfaction he felt at the technical accomplishment mingled with the thrill of seeing her at her most exposed, and both were accompanied and almost overpowered by the sentiment that made her pleasure his as well. And so when he began to detect the signs of her impending climax he broke their kiss and watched with avid attention as the pink in her cheeks began to saturate into crimson, and the top row of her teeth bit into her bottom lip. One hand released its grip on the sofa to curl around his the back of neck and squeeze hard as the other splayed out against his chest, and he observed with a faint but feral open-mouthed smile as her expression grew more intense and urgent.

Before she let go though, she forced her eyes open and then focused them directly onto his. Nothing changed except for the shared visual contact but his heart seemed to skip several beats, and then when she reached inside his pants just enough to curl a firm hand around him, it felt as though it stuttered to a complete stop. He gave a minute shudder, but his smile turned steely. Oh, typical of The Woman: she couldn't cede any control without exerting a bit herself and balancing the dynamic to some degree.

But she couldn't maintain the movement of her grip as she finally gave in to release, and so he was able to channel enough focus to take in every nuanced physical change in her body and face. She gave a hoarse cry and tilted her head back, exposing the long, straining tendons of her neck, and causing the coat to pull open further so that he could see the pounding pulse-point at the base of her throat.

Watching her climax was the most viscerally arousing thing he had experienced in the night so far, and he felt himself reacting with a surge of pure carnality. When she blinked out of her post-orgasmic thrall and reached for his lap, his hand closed hard around her wrist.

"No. No more waiting," he growled, low and breathless. "I want you now."

He was gratified for a moment to see her catch her breath, but then her eyes narrowed and her mouth descended on his again. His hands sifted through her hair and down the sides of her neck in restive circuits, until the demanding need he felt prompted him to ask against her lips, "IUD?"

"Mmm," she said in the affirmative as she stretched one arm back to push at his trousers, and he helped by toeing off his shoes and socks and then kicking them the rest of the way off.

He didn't follow up by asking about possible sexually transmitted illnesses or disease because he knew that she'd never expose herself to that type of risk, and she didn't turn the question around on him either. If she had it would've been purely for decorum's sake and they didn't stand on such meaningless formalities with one another. She knew, and he knew she knew, that there had been no one else. He suspected but never really knew for certain that she was the same; perhaps one day he would have the nerve to actually ask. He didn't know which option he would find more alarming: that she wasn't physically monogamous with him, or that she was.

The muscles beneath his hands shifted as she rose up onto her knees, interrupting the intruding thought, and she leaned in on palms that she braced over his collarbone.

Their faces were both flushed and glistening with perspiration but serious as their eyes locked, and Sherlock only broke the shared gaze for an instant when his lashes fluttered down in concentration as he took himself in hand and lined himself up with her. Once that was accomplished he looked up again, and their eye contact didn't falter as he pushed slowly up and she sunk down, and they converged.

Neither of them made a sound as their bodies joined, though they both let out low exhales—hers through parted lips, and his through his nostrils. His teeth were clamped tight with effort; he still found it difficult to maintain self-control and restraint during the initial, riotous inundation of physical stimuli. It didn't help that he had thought about and anticipated this precise moment for thirteen months.

They sat wrapped up in each other but unmoving for the length of several heavy breaths, both adjusting to the other and to the intense intimacy of their connection. Then characteristically she took the lead, tightening around him as she shifted forward on his thighs in a smooth rolling motion.

At that his mouth did fall open, and he sucked in a shaky lungful of air. He resisted the urge to drop his head back and submit to the exquisite feeling of her wrapped around him, and instead he gazed up at her through glinting eyes. He took in all the minute intricacies of her expression as they moved together, and felt even stronger pangs of sentiment for her: the yearning for her (_what?_) attention, admiration, and other vague emotions he couldn't identify, mingled with base possessiveness. It always rushed all the way to the surface during intercourse, like so much blood that flushed and heated his skin.

He could reel off the neuromodulators and endogenous chemicals responsible for the effects of this feeling, but in this one case he allowed that identifying the disparate parts couldn't accurately convey the sum of the whole. The chemicals and hormones only explained the intoxicating sensation sparked by the sentiment, not the sentiment itself. There was some unfathomable element that defied labels, and it accounted for why he'd always distrusted and even feared attachment, although he'd come to understand that it was also what made it so rewarding.

She clutched onto the back of the sofa once more, and the rougher friction snapped his focus back to the physical and ripped a soft but guttural moan from his throat.

Throughout, his coat continued to cocoon her, tenting over where they were joined and draping down his thighs and over his knees.

At one point the fragrance of her signature perfume had been imbued into the wool fibres of his coat, and it had been enough to divert him and even stop him dead in his tracks him for weeks when he caught a whiff of it. But that wouldn't hold a candle to the distracting power of the scent it would carry now, and if he aspired to get work of any value done in the upcoming month, he knew he would have to send it in for dry-cleaning first thing the following morning.

He also knew that just as before, he wouldn't. With her, there was no such thing as willpower, only its poor alternative compartmentalisation, and even that wasn't as effective as he'd prefer. There was a reason he'd thought that he was only imagining her earlier that evening—her Mind Palace version tended to crop up at inopportune times, sometimes at even the most peripheral reference to her.

Groaning, he wrapped his arm around her waist and hauled her—real, tangible her—even closer against him, but the fabric that had previously titillated now chafed. He needed to be with her without restriction or barriers, had to feel the tactile, sensuous slide of her skin on his.

He pushed his other hand between them to work at the buttons, and she seemed to be of the same mind, because the moment he managed to undo them she shrugged out of the coat and then stilled the rotation of her hips just long enough to pull the deep plum-coloured top she had been wearing underneath over her head. Even as she was tossing it over the discarded coat he had already undone the clasp of her bra, and that went on top of the growing pile next.

As soon as she was as nude as he was he pulled her into a tight embrace, and as their bodies pressed together they both gave sighs of satisfaction, then came together to share a deep, passionate kiss. A moment later they resumed their fluid, synchronous movements with only the occasional punctuated break in their mouths' connection, but he continued to hold her crushed against him so that he could feel her heart thundering against his chest.

Minutes passed, and their rocking motion became less flowing give-and-take and more erratic. She resumed her hold on the sofa frame with one hand and wrapped her other arm around his shoulders, anchoring herself to him as she met his increasingly rough upward strokes. With a harsh groan he further tightened one elbow around her waist and moved his other hand up to cradle the back her neck, then flipped her onto her back lengthwise on the sofa.

He pivoted onto his knees and moved between her legs, and she reached behind her head to grasp the arm of the couch while she watched him, aroused anticipation etched into every tautened muscle in her face. He looked down, raking his eyes over her as his jaw clenched from the struggle to hold back for even the briefest time.

In contrast to when he had first met her, every millimetre of her bared skin now unleashed a torrent of observations and memories: what she liked, and how she liked it, and what any given part of her body looked like during every stage of arousal and release. Yet despite all the ways in which he had come to know her body, her mind was still as enigmatic and inscrutable as ever. He knew her completely, intimately—and yet not at all. She was the ever-shifting cipher that was unsolvable even to him, someone who kept him endlessly challenged and engaged in a world where most everything was dull and obvious, and the joy and reward were in the pursuit and the effort rather than the solution.

And so even though he did experience mid-coital flares of possessiveness, he knew that neither of them could ever truly have the other, nor would he ever want that, not really. It would signify that the balance of power had shifted too far one way or the other, and if that ever happened it would be the end the game. Regardless of who had 'won,' that would be a loss for both of them, and it would _hurt_.

And so it was enough for him to know that he saw the woman beyond _The Woman _better than any other person who had ever known her, and most likely as much as was even possible. That when he used that salutation it signified so much more than any _client_ of hers could ever comprehend or imagine.

Seconds after his eyes had made a path across her torso his hands followed, and he slid his palms over her breasts and down her sides, pushing hard enough that he made symmetrical trails of white through the blush that covered her skin. His hands came to a rest at her waist, then slipped under her hips to angle them towards him, just as she reached down to guide him back inside her.

She continued to look up him with eyes that smouldered with lust and approval, but he also saw a spark of the same sentiment and even possessiveness he felt. They were difficult to detect because they simmered just below all the more overt signs of desire, but he recognised them as if he were looking at his own reflection in a mirror.

He released her hips to interlace his fingers with hers, then pressed the backs of her hands into the cushions on either side of her head and used the traction to gain better leverage. His belly slid along hers as they moved in perfect cadence, and it occurred to him in some distant, detached part of his mind that while some of the aspects of their relationship were a challenge for both of them and with others he alone struggled, they had always been very, very good at this. From the beginning, and after every interval of separation, they had enjoyed significant sexual compatibility.

Even when he had been inexperienced, she'd brought out the instinctive and animalistic part of him that he would have previously sworn didn't exist, and that had compensated for his initial lack of technical skill. And then, on a day very early on in his life after death and right after they had reunited for the first time since Karachi, she had sent his already steep learning curve sky-rocketing. After they had both undressed and tumbled onto the bed he had reached for her, but she'd pushed him back onto the mattress with a small, bare foot to the centre of his chest and had proceeded to demonstrate for him explicitly how she liked to be touched. Needless to say he hadn't forgotten a single detail of that educational experience, though towards the end the data did become a bit fuzzy and corrupted...

The always-present element of competition helped as well—that vying for dominance and desire to show off, to impress. And on that note, he cast a glance down over her and saw that she wasn't nearly as close to finishing as he was. He released one of her hands to push his down her front and in between her legs, and his fingertips began to stroke her in sync with each strong thrust of his hips.

She arched her spine and tilted her head back with a rough cry, and he curved down to pull the tip of one breast into his mouth and roll his tongue across it, while her other hand remained captured in his and pinned to the sofa.

In retaliation she wrapped her legs around his waist and locked her ankles together, trapping his arm between them, and the new angle resulted in a deeper, tighter fit that made them both let out choked moans. The sounds reverberated through the still and silent sitting room, and made them seem even more indecent. But not only did Sherlock not care, he found that it fed into the growing frenzy of his lust and with a grunt he switched to her other breast.

It wasn't long before the fingers still entwined with his squeezed like a vise, her fingertips pressing into the back of his hand as she went tense beneath him, and he recognised all the signs of her teetering just on the brink of completion.

He shifted forward to push his mouth against her ear and murmur low, husky words of encouragement, all while he continued to move the hand that was pressed between them, and then for the second time she was coming unravelled beneath his touch. Her thighs dug against his sides as she held her breath then let it out again with a wanton moan that made him feel dizzy with his own need, and she tipped her head back even further so that he could feel the straining arc of her throat against his jaw.

When his lungs screamed out for more air (he was close himself, so, so close), he dropped his head to pant with exertion against her neck, and she released her grip on the sofa and plunged her fingers into his perspiration-dampened curls, clutching onto a fistful of hair. Her sharp pull caused him to utter a rough gasp, and the combination of the sensation and her passion-driven aggression was enough to drag him over the edge right behind her.

He withdrew his hand from her and planted it hard on the cushion beside her waist, then wrenched himself up to brace on it as the powerful wave swelled and swelled, but didn't yet break.

He needed to join this sensation—this precise pleasure—with her_, _and so his eyes sought out hers, and found that they were already trained on his face. Even in the immediate aftermath of her climax she watched him closely, and now it was she who consumed every flicker of meaning in his desperate, undone expression. He could never conceal anything from her, but in the instant that just preceded release the intensity of his feelings for her and the depth of his need were exposed, for her sharp gaze to see and understand in their entirety.

He fought to maintain their eye contact for as long as possible, but then at last the wave crested and shattered through him in warm pulses, and the overwhelming physical pleasure wrenched him out of the corresponding emotional climax. With a groan that resonated from his chest, his eyes squeezed shut as his face tensed into a grimace, and he let the sensation consume him—let himself fully submit to the intermingled pleasure and vulnerability and sentiment that he had only ever shared with one woman—_The_ Woman.


	4. Epilogue

After they both returned to marginal awareness they shifted to lay together back to front on the sofa, their legs entwined and both of them quiet and contemplative in the shared afterglow.

Irene broke the silence first, when she gave a soft, faintly patronising laugh then said, "Next time you talk to John you might want to have a word with him about what he posts online when he's had a bit to drink... he checked himself in on Facebook earlier tonight, and mentioned you."

Sherlock groaned, and shut his eyes.

"At last glance there were well over a hundred 'likes,' though I'm sure it's at least doubled by now. Apparently your public can't resist the image of _Sherlock Holmes_ doing something as mundane as going for a pint. They do all love to see you as more human," she said musingly.

A beat later her tone became warm and suggestive. "Not that I can talk..."

"Facebook," he growled. "_That's_ how you knew where I was. _Facebook_."

He didn't know whether to be irritated, disgusted, or amused, and settled for a combination of the three, which drew a chuckle from the woman pressed against his front.

"One needn't always be clever when the indiscretion of others is so reliably consistent," she said, and he opened his eyes to see her looking over her shoulder at him, one brow raised. "I would know, I've based an entire career on it."

Sherlock grunted in a blend of appreciation and concession at her statement, then pressed his lips against the back of her neck. As he felt the total relaxation and contentment unfurl through him again, he found that he couldn't get worked up about John's unintentional lack of discretion, and in fact he felt amusement edging out the other reactions. Lying this way was like a balm to an agitation he hadn't even realised he'd been feeling, and he felt more at peace than he had for months—perhaps since he had last lain with her like this, in Italy.

The thought of Italy did manage to pierce through the tranquillity of the moment, and after a kiss to a spot below Irene's ear, he extricated himself and turned towards the hall for the bathroom, while she stretched leisurely.

Several minutes later and feeling more in command of his senses, Sherlock returned to see that she hadn't moved from where she was sprawled across the sofa, and even in his replete state he found himself unable to pull his eyes away from her—to him she was sensuousness and at least a dozen varieties of temptation personified.

"Speaking of John, if he walked in at this moment and saw you lying there he'd suffer a massive coronary on the spot," Sherlock remarked without forethought, with all the overt male pride he actually felt.

Irene gave him a faint, lazy smile, which became sharp at the edges as she caught him sweeping his gaze over the same paths his fingertips and mouth had traced earlier.

"Because he'd be so shocked that I'm still not really dead? Or because it's obvious I've just been so thoroughly _had_..." she asked, and her voice was still warm and languid, but now also held a tinge of teasing.

"As I don't think he'd last long enough to notice your face - draw your own conclusions," he drawled, smirking.

He moved aside the coffee table with a rough shove of his foot, before he collapsed in front of the sofa and stretched his legs out before him, indifferent to his continued state of undress.

He leaned back and rested his head against the dip of her waist, savouring the sensation that his bones and muscles had turned to warm putty, though when he noticed the _pua_-turned-scarf at the edge of his field of vision he felt his lips pull into a frown. He turned and narrowed his eyes at it as something she had said—something related to that length of fabric somehow—nagged at him, though it remained just out of reach. A second later he sat bolt upright as the elusive thought resolved itself into memory.

"Diplomat," he said.

"Mm?" she asked distractedly.

"_Diplomat_," he repeated. He felt the comfortable stupor of sex dissolve as the full implication of that single word hit him like a dose of epinephrine.

"You're carrying information for not just a high-ranking government official, but a diplomat. A Malaysian diplomat, to be precise. He's the one who gave you the gift of the _pua_, and you used it as an opportunity to create misdirection."

"_Now_ you're on the right track. Do think we jostled something into place?" Irene asked with an insinuating curl of her lips, but he was too preoccupied with the brilliant obfuscation she'd staged to make any retort.

Instead he turned to assess her in open and frank appreciation. She fundamentally understood the game and what his mind craved, and therefore she understood him, and could relate to him in a way that no one else could. The way to other men's hearts may be through their stomachs (_why in God's name hadn't he deleted that inane expression_), but for Sherlock Holmes, it could only be through his mind. And while her misdirections and red herrings were well considered and clever so as to best achieve the desired effect on him, her predilection to even respond that way to him was organic and effortless. It was an opportunity for her to engage her native cunning, sexuality, and playfulness; toying with him, seducing him into the physical through his weakness for an intellectual puzzle, was also what she liked.

Another rush of that particular warmth that only she inspired mingled in with his post-coital high and the promise of an imminent solution, and he felt even more intoxicated now than he had after he had slammed back an actual mind-altering substance earlier that night.

"It appears to fit and so it skews all the other data—it was the first thing I noticed and informed the way I read everything else. And you did it on purpose," he said, unable to prevent the enamoured admiration he felt from seeping into his voice.

She rolled onto her belly and propped herself up on elbows, then answered him with a smile and an ironically quirked eyebrow.

"Les choses que nous faisons pour l'amour, non?"

He was struck by her accent, which was hypothetically plausible but certainly not Gallic, and he recalled the silk gloves she wore, the slightly rougher texture of her skin which in combination with its flush he had attributed to sunburn, and the warm-toned platinum shade of her not-platinum earrings.

His breath caught in his throat as he sensed the vapour of seemingly unrelated, disparate details coalescing into something coherent. This fleeting moment, the fraction of a second just before realisation, was the rush he craved—the fundamental kernel of his addiction. His eyes glazed as he turned inward, and the accumulated data slotted perfectly into place, weaving together like the fingers of clasped hands. And then suddenly, with a burst of adrenaline, the answer materialised—bright, clear, and abruptly obvious.

"Ahh. _Rabat_," he said with a gratified exhale, and the intellectual consummation was every bit as satisfying as the physical climax he'd experienced minutes before. His voice was deep with satisfaction as he concluded, "That's where you've been."

Diplomats _were_ high-level government officials, but what stood them apart from other roles was the fact that they carried out their posts abroad, which in this case must have been Morocco. And if he subtracted the calculated variable of the _pua kumbu_, it all came together. He should've known to dismiss it from the start; it was far too overt a clue to be taken at face value. The Woman dealt in subtleties and nuance, and he knew she relished the creation of an amply challenging puzzle just as much as he enjoyed unravelling it.

The slight dehydration of her skin had resulted from exposure to the arid climate, the silk he had all but overlooked had been _sea_ silk as opposed to moth silk, which, while next to impossible to procure except in the most exclusive of auctions on the European continent, was still available in the more refined indoor markets in Morocco's capital. Her earrings hadn't been white gold, but Moroccan silver, and not just new since he had last seen her, but procured within the past week. He could tell that she had worn them consistently for the past several days due to the specific creases in her earlobes, and so they had been subjected to minor wear—hence the scuffs. But if she had worn them for any longer than that he would've been able to determine by the deeper marks they would've accrued through longer sustained wear that they were made of a much softer metal that anything in the gold family.

He leaned against the sofa and tilted back his head again, and he felt even more boneless and euphoric in the aftermath of the solution, and satiated in every way he could imagine.

Irene stretched her arm out to card her fingers through the clumps of his sweat-dampened hair.

"Mm, if I weren't so spent I'd finally have you on that desk... Though the night's not over just yet," she said by way of confirmation, and the fond, satisfied notes in her voice suddenly reminded Sherlock of the actual meaning of the Arabic-accented French she had spoken moments before.

"What?" he asked in a delayed response, and his tone was sharp out of disbelief more than true aversion. He sat up and twisted at the waist to look at her, and her hand dropped to the sofa. "_'_Pour_ l'amour'_?"

She gave a low and delighted chuckle, and leaned forward on her elbows, pressing her clasped knuckles against her cheek as she looked at him. "Oh, look at you," she purred, unfazed. "I don't believe I've seen that particular expression on your face since the first moment we met. It's only an idiom, dear, no need to look so frightened."

"I—"

He had started to retort out of habit, and realised too late that he didn't know how to continue. After a moment of futile quick thinking he closed his mouth and frowned, then made to turn around and lean against her side again.

"I'd like to think I looked marginally more composed when you were the one expressing that sentiment to me," she said. "And in a much more direct manner, if I recall."

At that reference his every internal system froze and he detected a faint ringing in his ears. It was probably the only thing that could have undone the absolute gratification he had felt from the amalgam of physical and intellectual release, but it was potent.

After several fractions of a second that felt like the span of a full minute, he grabbed his pants and got to his feet while pulling them on, suddenly all too conscious of his nakedness. He strode across the room to his Le Corbusier chair to gain distance from the devastating distraction that a nude, post-coital Irene Adler made, but he didn't take a seat. As he stood by the mantel he found that he didn't know what to do with his hands, and he briefly wished he were wearing his trousers as well so that he could slide them into the pockets. He settled for clenching them against the sides of his thighs.

He had believed she would just let that serious lapse go unmentioned, out of the unspoken agreement they shared to never to delve too deeply into emotion, and to let actions and interactions stand in for expressions of sentiment. Apparently her own inherent need to _understand_ overrode that, and he was torn between empathy and resentment.

"In Italy, Christmas—" she prompted after he didn't respond, and he saw the gleam of her former, and resumed, profession in her eye.

Ah. So as ever, there was more at play here than he understood, more than her mere curiosity. She had an agenda, though he was damned if he knew what it was.

"Yes, I remember," he snapped. "I _was_ there."

"Mm, you certainly were," she said, and then she let the comment linger in the air between them so that he felt compelled to say something.

"Well," he said, his voice terse and clipped. "_You_ might recall that it was the night before I left for Serbia."

Serbia had been the endgame—the final piece left on the board, and also the most volatile. He had known that he would either successfully dismantle Moriarty's network after two years of exile and return home to London at last or die in the process, and facing such diametric prospects as victory or death had put him in one the most peculiar frames of mind he'd ever experienced. It had been simultaneously reckless and introspective—a very dangerous combination, particularly in the presence of The Woman.

And then when sex had been added to that already unstable compound, the result had been the verbalisation of something he had (_strictly_) never intended to say aloud. She hadn't said anything in response at the time and he had come to believe that it would go forever unreferenced, mostly to his relief.

Still, another part of him had noted the absence of any reciprocation, and the innermost, intentionally repressed part of him had taken it almost as a passive (and even, perhaps, a somewhat expected) rejection.

"Oh I know you'd never say such a thing under normal circumstances, it's not your style," she said in her low, smooth voice. "Look at everything you put John Watson through, just to create a charged enough moment to clear the air after you came back. Believe me, I understand entirely."

Sherlock wondered briefly if the pun about a 'charged' moment was intentional, though he knew it was just an attempt to distract himself.

"Our own pressure-filled situation wasn't fabricated, but the effect was the same," she went on. "Things were said. Things that people like us don't usually say... At least not like that."

He pulled his lips between his teeth, making his mouth a thin compressed line, and he kept his eyes averted. This was grossly outside of his comfort zone; she did that, did it with impunity, and had done since the day they'd met.

After drawing in a breath, he managed in a grudging voice, "As I also recall, it was only one of us who said anything."

She looked at him for a moment. "Yes. I admit it did take me by surprise, I wasn't expecting—"

"It's not as if that was the first time you've ever heard it," he interrupted, defensive and deflecting.

She nodded once, her lips pouting thoughtfully. "Of course not. From clients, any number of lovers..." She seemed to speak her next words with care. "But what they actually cared about was how I made them feel, or the idea of the given fantasy persona I adopted. None of those people matter, I'm a stranger to them all."

"So you're saying, it... _mattered_... when I said it," he asked, his voice low and halting. This was some of the most unfamiliar, alien territory he had tread since Karachi, and while most of him he would give anything to change the subject, his ever-curious nature felt compelled to see it through.

And perhaps there was more than simple curiosity at play on his part, as well.

She didn't answer, only continued to look at him, and his pulse rate began to elevate. When she slid off the sofa and made her way across the room towards him with her hips swaying and her blue eyes piercing his, it lurched into a gallop and his lips parted.

"_No_ one really knows you," he said as he watched her approach.

When she reached him she took his hand in hers and then pressed it flat to her bare chest, just above her left breast. Against his palm he could feel that her heart was thundering just as rapidly as his own.

Then she raised her eyes to his again, and when their gazes locked he felt its pace accelerate further, pulsing hard under his touch. The meaning didn't escape him: it was the press of his fingertips to her wrist's pulse-point, escalated in both gesture and significance.

"Does anyone really know _you_?" she rejoined, her pupils boring into his so that it was inconceivable that he could conceal anything from her.

"You do," he said at once.

"As much as anyone can," he modified in a voice barely more than a vibration, then amended again: "More than I ever expected that anyone would."

She stepped in closer to take a hold of his other hand as well, and her expression grew pointed and challenging. He scanned his eyes across her, reading what her eyes and body language communicated, and then let out the soft breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding.

_As much as anyone can._

When she saw that he understood her her expression softened, though she didn't smile, nor did he. The moment felt too solemn, too weighty, for such levity.

_More than she ever expected anyone would._

The words resonated with the thoughts he'd had whilst in the grips of passion fifteen minutes before, about how he would never know or understand her (the way he did Mrs. Hudson, or John, or Lestrade, or even Molly to some degree), but he had gotten the farthest, of that he was certain. And though even with his limited experience he had come to realise that most of the thoughts that tended to crop up at that time were products of his hormones- and endorphins-saturated brain (and therefore better left unexamined once his lust had cooled and his heart-rate subsided), this one retained its logical integrity.

No, neither Sherlock nor Irene were zero sums who could ever be fully understood or 'domesticated' by anyone, and neither would either of them ever desire that of or for the other. But he was the extreme outlier on her spectrum of negatively-skewed, infinitely smaller gains—just as she was on his.

To that point, of course she had initially assumed that he wouldn't require from her a statement of (what turned out to be, what _should_ have been) the obvious, because he never did. He could almost always observe and see and then know, but Irene was ever that exception—the asterisk on his otherwise unblemished record.

The Woman, on the other hand, had been able to detect his tension and uncertainty that still lingered from that night in Italy and the admission that had taken place there, proving yet again who maintained the slight edge in their relationship. And not only had she diagnosed the problem, she had devised the perfect solution. By deliberately coding the deeper sentiment he'd confessed into the emblematic gestures they already shared, she had allayed his damned insecurities without resorting any mawkish, distasteful sentimentality herself.

With a low, uttered sigh he used their joined hands to pull her flush against him, and expressed to her in another type of nonverbal language all of the admiration, appreciation, and sentiment he felt for her.

Soon the soft kiss became more aggressive, and transitioned from a conclusion into a prelude. She leaned back and cocked her head, then gave him a sultry look and tugged him towards the hallway and his bedroom.

His eyes warmed and a smirk pulled down one corner of his mouth at the way she again assumed the lead in his own flat, but he made his way after her without hesitation.

She had been right: the night was far from over. And though he wasn't certain that she would still be there when he awoke, their reunion had filled him with a confidence in their unconventional arrangement that he hadn't previously felt.

He knew that he would never entirely trust her—due far more to the vulnerability and potential for deep hurt his attachment to her created, than any trace misgivings he had about her years-ago alliance with Jim Moriarty—but now he felt more securely invested, whereas before a small, fatalistic part of him had questioned whether every liaison would be their last. Perhaps it was due to the establishment of an elaborated shorthand to express their sentiment, or the way it seemed surprisingly natural and satisfying to have her in his flat in London, or how assured he now felt regarding her continued and long-term interest in him...

He followed her down the darkened corridor but halted their progress before they had even reached halfway by catching her around the waist and kissing her with all the exhilaration and passion he felt at the understanding they had reached, although this time it was he who ended up backed against the wall. He certainly didn't mind.

The last fully-formed thought he had for the remaining hours of the night was that she had been right in another way, as well. Everything had changed and yet nothing had changed—not just in the months since they'd last seen each other, but in the two years since Karachi as well.

As far as they had come since then, that was when he had first understood that even if he didn't know where in the world she was, or what alias she was employing while there, she would always remain _The _Woman, and his touchstone.

* * *

><p><strong>"But [Sherlock] has The Woman in his life. Irene Adler is always his touchstone..."<br>- Amanda Abbington**

**A huge and ecstatic thank you to everyone who has read, reviewed, favorited, and followed this story. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it!**


End file.
